Native American activist Nathan Phillips, who claimed he was intimidated by a group of children from a Covington Catholic high school says that he felt the student Nick Sandmann’s response after the incident was dishonest.
“Coached, and written up for him, insincerity, lack of responsibility; those are the words I came up with,” Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder, told Today when asked what he felt about the student’s response to the confrontation.
Phillips had been taking part in the Indigenous Peoples March and later walked up to Sandmann and others – in Washington for the anti-abortion March for Life – while banging on a drum. Sandmann stood still and smiled faintly at him, an image that went viral.
Initial reports that Sandmann was harassing Phillips were corrected. It also emerged that Phillips had approached the students to bang his drum. The Washington Examiner established that he had a violent criminal record and escaped from jail as teenager
Sandmann said in an NBC Today interview aired Wednesday he had the right to stand there and was trying not to escalate the situation. “I see it as a smile saying: ‘This is the best you’re going to get out of me. You aren’t going to get any more reaction.”
Phillips responded: “I was upset that I was made to sit down and watch it [the interview]. I read his statement,” “I got into the first 30 seconds 40 seconds of it [the interview] and I was like, ‘that’s all I need to hear.’”
Sandmann issued a statement with the assistance of a public relations firm his family hired to help them handle the fallout from the episode.
“Those aren’t even his words if he has a PR firm,” Phillips said, adding that he wanted to see “some sincerity” and “some sense of responsibility for his actions” from Sandmann.
Phillips said he forgives Sandmann and the other students. “Even though I’m angry, I have that forgiveness in my heart for those students,” he said.
Videos of the incident suggest students weren’t doing anything to antagonize Phillips, and that they were instead shouting school chants in response to Black Hebrew Israelites who were taunting the group. But Phillips said he heard some students yelling, “build that wall.”
“No, I did hear that,” Phillips said. “I have seen some out there on the Internet where you can hear them saying, ‘build that wall.’” Phillips claimed that he tried to walk away from the altercation, but was surrounded and unable to leave.
“I did not have any problems until the students started saying they were getting death threats,” Phillips said. “As soon as that happened, it started happening with me.”
